The First Light Emitting Diodes

A love letter, straight from my heart - to the beautiful Light Emitting Diode! In this vlog I go deep into my collection and show some of the very first LEDs ever made, review them in context of the history of LED's, and also show some of the coolest and weirdest kinds of LEDs that you'll see around. This one is for hard-core geeks and dweebs only! Thanks for watching...

[pirobotbeta]

In the mid 1970's I was in High School, and had subscriptions to every amateur electronics magazine you could name.
The buzz about LED's had been around for a while, but they were lab curios, operating in pulsed mode at reduced temperatures.  And mostly infrared.
Then the commercial units appeared, and I had to have one.
The glorious day came when the local Radio Shack had its first visible red LED!
It cost about $8.50 in 1974 dollars!
I saved my money, mowed some yards, and bought the darn thing.
I hooked it up to the power source, and marveled at the ruddy glow!
Here was light, being created at the atomic level!  Quantum stuff in your hand!
It was magical, and I still feel that sense of wonder from time to time.

[AtomicShrimp]

Can I just say how adorable it is that you have a favourite LED

[richardhead]

I love them too, Fran.

In fact, I secretly call them *_Love Emitting Diodes!!_*

[glenthemann]

seeing frans smile as she geeks out hard makes me smile

[Askjerry]

As you are probably aware Fran, if you shine a light source on an LED, it will generate electricity much like a solar cell. Red LEDs are more sensitive to red light, Green are more sensitive to Green light, and depending on how the Blue is manufactured, they are more sensitive to blue light. This means that you can take an RGB LED and shine white light on it... and have the leads connected to the A/D input of a microprocessor. Then you read this level and presume it to be this highest level... scale it to 255... with no light being 0... and you have a color sensor. Something interesting to play with.

[drdos]

Blue LEDs sure fascinate me. I tinkered a bunch with breadboards as a kid in the late 90s, and one day my grandfather brings home a blue LED for me. Never saw anything like it, there were no blue lights in consumer products. Seeing them in this video still brings a little nostalgia.

[audinos]

You're making me all nostalgic. I bought my first LED's from Radio Shack as a kid in the late 70's - "jumbo" (5mm) reds. I still have them in a large tackle box with thousands of newer ones. I also have a 70's green LED with a red die inside, although I discovered in high school electronics that, with sufficient voltage, a green LED will light up orange for a second before exploding. I had a Western Electric Trimline phone with one of those unusual green LED's behind the dial. The color was different enough that I didn't know it was an LED until I opened it up. Ill never forget my first sight of a SiC blue LED - a sky-blue color that isn't seen in newer ones. Regarding unusual shapes of 70's LED's, my favorite were the ones with a faceted top. Great memories!

[sabahudinbjedic]

Hello :) I have some soviet era LEDs :) they are really cool. And some produced in Bulgaria too. During cold war Bulgaria used to produce microprocessors and their first computer Pravetz II. Greetings from Bulgaria.

[Datande]

These are beautiful LEDs as well as interesting historical "artifacts". It's amazing to compare these to neo pixels or the LED lightbulbs that are becoming common now.
I remember the first time I read about blue LEDs in Wired. It was such an amazing breakthrough!

[rarbiart]

_"Happyness is a 10 pound bag of 7segment LEDs"_ (Fran Banche)

[arjovenzia]

As a career electronic geek, and working with LED signage on the daily, seeing some of these early units is really cool.
I have to attribute LED's to my introduction into electronics, playing with dads junk box.

thanks for showing us your collection, greatly appreciated

[Skyfox]

I always loved LEDs, too. I was enchanted by my aunt’s calculator with the red LED display, and my brother had the Little Professor with a similar display. When I got my electronics kit from Radio Shack I was fascinated by the red LED. I had an active imagination, and looking into it was like looking into another world to me. When I scrapped a VCR or something that had clear LED that put out bright green, it was like I found jewels. I still have those! Then in the 90s when my local discount store started selling blue LED keychain lights, I bought several, along with the red and green, and that was about the time higher intensity LEDs were coming out which were so cool. BTW, I always pronounce it as “led” rather than saying each letter L-E-D, ever since I was a little.

[alexpowers]

I noticed as a kid when I listened to my crystal radio in the middle of the night, I could actually see a very tiny feint light coming out of the detector diode. I thought that was cool. Awesome collection!

[JimTheZombieHunter]

@21:24 .. And for decades I thought I was the only "weirdo" who found certain 'pretty' components simply pleasing to look at and touch.

[flomojou]

Just love LEDs too, it was genuinely exciting going to Radio Shack in the 80s and getting an assortment of random red, green, and yellow LEDs. Also amazing to see the continual progression of super bright red LEDs, it seemed impossible that they got so bright. The first blue LED I ever saw was in a diffused white package, very dim but so surreal after a life of red and green or yellow for so long!

[Miata]

Back on Christmas of 1975 I got a Radio Shack LED calculator. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. My Mom had an earlier TI LED unit but mine had FUNCTIONS!

[musicmanloxton]

@Fran Blanche
If my memory serves me correctly, that TO92 IS actually a working transistor. It would light up to indicate the transistor is in use. I had my hand on a few of these back in the late 80's.

[ThomasWinders]

I don't know why I am watching this at three in the morning... anyways, very interesting lesson about leds so... thumb up! 21:39 - I'd make a ring, or a pendant out of it - it's so beautiful!! and there's something for you: once I stole an led from the place where I work. There were some leds every now and there, over some doors, maybe for emergency/fire signalling purpouses, I don't know because I've never seen one light up (fortunately, you might say). Some doors had a green led on, some had one yellow and one green, and some others a red one too. The fact that caught my attention was that those leds were HUGE - I mean, each led was like 3 cm in diameter. So I disassembled three of them (I used them as a mod on a computer case), and the strange thing was that each led had a GND connector plus 2 or 3 other pins, and connecting more pins, the led got brighter... don't know if you ever stumbled upon them.

[thechetjr]

Fran, I can't believe you can hold onto stuff for such a long time. I envy your ability to re discover these treasures again and again, that must be truly exciting!

[Gexzumi]

This video is heaven. I've always felt the same way about LEDs. As a kid Radio Shack was my second home mostly because of them. I would buy them and stick them in things with dead watch batteries which still had enough power for them any chance I got. At a summer camp we were supposed to draw a picture and stick the little ornament incandescent bulbs in them and I brought some LEDs from home and used those instead haha. Then as an adult when automotive LEDs started becoming a thing I replaced every single bulb and light fixture with LEDs. Then when LED light bulbs kicked off replaced every single bulb in the house with LEDs. LEDs are amazing! Instant subscriber!